The purpose of this K01 application is to support a period of didactic and mentored research experience in basic and applied methods of behavioral pharmacology, with a particular focus on nicotine use among psychiatric populations. The PI, who received his doctorate in 1999, has acquired expertise in affective responding and information processing mechanisms (e.g., attention) associated with anxiety disorders. His research program has led him to an interest in how anxiety disorder populations, which have a twofold increase in smoking prevalence relative to the general population, use smoking as a compensatory mechanism to regulate affective disturbance and cognitive performance deficits. Towards this end, the PI is seeking didactic and research training to expand upon his existing expertise in order to conduct translational research whereby laboratory methods and paradigms from basic research will be applied to clinically-relevant questions related to smoking and psychiatric comorbidity. Specifically, he will examine operant mechanisms of reinforcement associated with nicotine use among anxiety disorder populations who are chronic smokers. The ultimate mission of this research program is to understand the mechanisms by which nicotine may have anxiolytic or anxiogenic effects on disorder-related anxiety as a function of environmental stimulus conditions. It is also a goal of this didactic/research program to examine nicotine's effect on indices of cognitive functioning in said psychiatric populations. Such research will ultimately help to shape empirically informed smoking cessation intervention programs with these populations in latter stages of the PI's career. Phase 1 of the training program will involve a period of didactics and laboratory research. During this time, Dr. Buckley will be completing a pilot study designed to test the interaction between nicotine, attentional-demand, and conditioned arousal in chronic PTSD. This study was recently funded via a B-Start grant by NIDA (1 R03 DA 15113-01). During the latter half of the proposed training period, the PI will continue didactic training while conducting a double-blind, placebo-controlled study aimed at comparing the effects of nicotine on cognitive task performance in both psychiatric and non-psychiatric groups.